THE SPARROW-HAWK. 69 



above the ground, in a spruce-fir, — which did not exceed twice 

 that height. In Ireland, I have known this bird to build in 

 trees only; but according to Macgillivray, "in the Outer 

 Hebrides, where there are no trees, it builds in rocks." In Hills- 

 borough Park, according to the gamekeeper, it always constructs 

 a nest for itself; while the kestrel, on the contrary, takes posses- 

 sion of the old nest of some other bird, as that of the magpie, &c. 

 Two nests, reported to me as situated in " dark fir trees," as flat, 

 and consisting of little materials, were robbed here in the last 

 week of May, 1848. They contained four young each, one brood 

 being about two, and the other fourteen days out. Birds from 

 both nests came under my notice ; they were snow-white in the 

 down; their irides light hazel. At Mount Louise, (Monaghan,) 

 " it builds a rough kind of nest in the fork of a larch or Scotch- 

 fir tree, and about twenty feet from the ground. The nest has 

 never been met with there in hedge-row timber, nor in a detached 

 tree, but always somewhere in the interior of the plantation." A 

 correspondent, writing from the south of Ireland, remarks, that 

 he has never known the sparrow-hawk use the nest of another 

 bird, but always to build one for itself ; adding, that " the 

 structure is little more artistical than that of the ring-dove, being 

 merely a wide and shallow platform of sticks, without any lining, 

 except some accidental feathers of the old birds, or their prey." * 

 These facts are mentioned, as, in some places, the sparrow-hawk 

 would seem, like the kestrel, to appropriate to itself the old nests 

 of other birds.f A friend at Springvale (county of Down), has 

 frequently taken the nest of the sparrow-hawk from a tree when 

 the young were nearly fledged, and placed it on the ground under 

 a basket, in the bottom of which a hole was cut to admit the old 

 birds when they came to feed them. The basket was quite ex- 

 posed to view, and rat-traps were placed about it, in which, 

 though often screened by only a single leaf of the sycamore, the old 

 birds were captured; in snares, too, set around the basket, they 

 were often caught. Once, when the female was taken, the male 



* Mr. J. Poole, 

 f See Macgillivray's Hist. Brit. Birds, vol. iii. p. 358-359. 



